The desire to accomplish something or to change an undesired trait or behaviour is strong by the end of the year, or actually by the end of a cycle one feel most comfortably with. For me it is my birthday and start of a new school year.

To stop smoking is one of the most common resolution along with saving money, getting healthier or just exercising more in general.

Even though all these are undoubtedly very desirable objectives, 80% of resolutions fail by February.

And here's why.

We live in a world with liberals taking over. Almost everyone now becomes accepted and the diversity is so much more present than it was hundred years ago. We have a LGBTQ+ movements that are normalizing every bit of their community. Their situation is definitely not easy, in some countries they are still discriminated, but it's way better than it was.

How this political atmosphere however correlates with poledance?

Poledance or poledancing is an activity which stands on a border with sports and dance. There are two main streams of pole schools: Chinese poledance, and classic poledance.

Chinese poledance is the one closer to a sport. Dancers are more like athletes since their main attribute is strength.

On the other hand, classic poledance is more flowy and artistic. It resembles dance way more than Chinese one.

Now when you understands what poledance is, you may realize why the beginning. History of poledancing is not very attractive to many people since it has been tied to prostitution. Nowadays there are many more people actively trying the sport. They are proving how something so negative in many people's minds can become something so beautiful. However there are still so many people who think that poledancer is just a fancy name for a prostitute.

It is not. It's a beautiful and artistic expression of what your body can do when training really hard. It's the toil and sweat, sore muscles, stretching and bending. It's the effort to make the hardest moves look effortless, it's the talent to be graceful like a ballerina even if your skin is destroyed from the tension.

Yes, poledancing has evolved from stripping. But today it means so much more than that. On special silicone poles you can dance dressed. You don't have to be sensual. You can show off only your strength not your body.

MY STORY

I fell in love with poledance when I was already doing something similar. I heard about it before but I was always very afraid to try it. It seemed really cool and beautiful but I thought I just wasn't a person who should do it. I was always considered more cute and nerdy (I've been reading a looot of books) than attractive and pretty. I was afraid that me with my shyness and weird personality would look plain stupid on the pole trying various stuff basically naked.(Then I heard many people have the same issue.)

I got to know about it from my friend at the time and she really convinced me to give it a try. I remember I was super stressed and uneasy about it but excited at the same time. After me liking it a lot and discovering amazing community on Instagram I started to do trainings regularly. And it haven't changed since then.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT IT SO MUCH?

1. The connection between a sport and a dance.

As I stated before, poledancing is one of these sports/arts you're not really sure what they are. They can be perceived as both or one at the time.

Spinning pole (the one that rotates) is so much fun, but way harder than a static one. It also has another benefit. For people like me who often gets sick in cars or buses, the spin pole is something that reduces this feeling (because when you train you sometimes feel like that). But don't worry, you have to spin really fast to actually feel bad.

The connection means that poledance can be a great work out for various muscle groups on your upper body. You really work with abs, arms, back and shoulders. People are often saying they lost a a lot of weight while poledancing.

2. Overcoming yourself

I started doing this sort of exercises because I was afraid of heights and I wanted to overcome this fear.

Not only this helped with my mentality towards heights (however I still dislike them) but the training gave me a more muscular and stronger body. I feel so good while being able to do a proper pull-up.

With poledancing you'll learn more about your body and what it is able to do. You will find out how muscles work, and you'll reach a new level of self confidence.

4. Health benefits

As I was saying before, poledancing is great for muscles. Therefore you will become stronger and healthier since it's also a great workout for losing fat. You will have more muscles than fat which is most of the times healthier.

Working out in general also helps with sleep since after the training you'll become more tired. Your quality of sleep will therefore improve.

While working out, hormones called endorphins are realeased. They are connected with feeling happy.

5. It's a great workout

Many other women would confirm that poledancing just makes our bodies leaner. I haven't realized that, but someone told me that they know a person who do this sport and she lost 2kg of fat after one month of training actively.

The movements are very core centered. You also have to use your shoulders, biceps (but especially triceps) to lift yourself up. We are also using our abdomen muscles.

Even though we don't use legs that much, they also become muscular. It's because of two reasons:

A) you can't target losing fat

This means you can't do certain exercises and think you'll lose only arm fat.

B) you need to lift yourself up

For your body is way better to lose weight in legs so the abdomen doesn't have to lift that much of weight. The body is always adapting to what we are doing, so this only makes sense.

5. It's something different

Not everyone does this sport and even though the community gets bigger every day, poledancing is often categorized as not that common.

When you are bored of all the team games like basketball, volleyball and tennis, you should try poledance. If you are bored with dancing or gymnastics, you should try it too. It will only be an advantage for you when starting training.

6. The community

I don't really know much of community in my country but the one on the internet is pretty amazing. There are people who do workshops, even online, who often helps you when you ask about certain position.

There are many videos regarding positions as well. Many polers (people who do poledance) are showing you exactly how to get into positions. Lately there has been a trend of people levitating. They only had legs on the pole but they were not really holding the pole with legs. One poler then showed a video on how she did the trick and it was pretty interesting! (She put yoga blocks below her head and her hair all over so they would be covered).

The community is great but you also need to look for fakes. But that's the case in every community I guess.

Hope some of my reasons convinced you to search for local studio and attend your first class!

Thanks for reading,

Radka